Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Paranoia...or justified?

I finally have the time to blog now seeing that my sis and bro-in-law (hereby will be known as BIL cause I’m too damn lazy to type the thing all the time okay. Let me be.) are already asleep. I am doing this all on her laptop cause I left mine at home.

Not that I wanted to but because my sis practically yelled down the phone telling me not to bring mine. Her reason being is that when I come back to Malaysia, I will be bringing a lot of stuff so what’s the point of lugging around the laptop. Just additional burden. I could of course yelled back at her saying that I will bring it cause my laptop is my lifeline, an extension of my being, the very reason of my sanity and where I store half naked pictures of firemen I’ve accumulated over the years…but I didn’t. Cause as much as I love my sister and I do; the woman is fucking fierce okay. I get shit scared when she’s angry with me. I still have memories of her yelling at me when I broke her hairclip when I was 7 and she was 12 and that still send shivers down my spine.

I still have an uncontrollable urge to scream out “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!! I didn’t mean to sit on your hairclip with my giant (yet sexy) ass! I’ll buy you a new one!!” whenever we get into an argument. Actually I did that once a couple years ago and she stopped yelling at me, stared and then just walked away mumbling something about weirdos, sister and “just my luck.”

But….I digress.

This post is not about Finland yet. It’s about my journey coming here.

Before I left Malaysia for here, my parents reminded me again and again and again not to leave my bag alone unattended at the airport, not to speak to people, just sit quietly and mind my own business. Not that I am a 9 year old kid that needs reminding but because well they are parents and these days you are always reading about how Malaysian women ended up being drug mules for something or other. I am in fact a single, young woman traveling on my own- prime candidate for a whooole lot of fuckery.

My parents were telling me the same exact thing in the car on the way to the airport. When we were parking the car at the airport carpark. While I was checking in my luggage at the airport. While I was searching for a place to sit at the airport. When I was sipping my hot chocolate at the airport’s café.

Same damn thing. Don’t leave your bags alone. Don’t talk to strangers. Do not become a drug mule and end up in a Turkish prison. Basically the same thing every parent tells their children when they are traveling alone ya know.

So I got on the plane and ended up sitting in an isle sit. There were 2 empty seats between me and some middle aged dude. For a while there it seems like the 2 seats were going to stay empty when at the last minute this dude came in. Blond hair, blue eyes, about 6 feet tall, beer gut hanging out, tattoos all over his arm and uummm…….braided beard. No I’m serious. His beard…..was braided. It was one long…thing hanging off his chin and I knew he was going to be trouble before he parked his ass right beside me. It wasn’t comfortable, I can assure you that. About 5 mins before take off he asked the airhostess for vodka. I thought he was a nervous flyer, probably needs a small amount of liquid courage. So yeah we all have issues. But apparently his issue became my issue when he downed the vodka with 2 white pills. Dude, you don’t mix liquor and medications. Look at what happened to Heath Ledger. Let’s all take something out of that little episode shall we?

About 10 mins into the flight, he started mumbling incoherently. Then he fidgeted about. The hell, these are coach seats and fucker you’re 6 feet tall. Stop fidgeting. After that he begun leaning on me, by this time I believe that he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing. Liquor, pills and being that high in the air can do shit to you so I managed to squeeze out of the seat and asked an air hostess to relocate me. I honestly believe that he wasn’t a bad dude…just you know he enjoys taking pills with Vodka.

All to his own.

I did not encounter another pill popper at my next seat but there was this old lady and all through the flight she tried to make conversation with me. At first I pretended not to speak English but that was stupid cause I ended up taking out an English novel to read so then I had to speak to her. She was about 75, Irish by her accent and claimed to be a nun. She wore this huge cross at her neck and told me about her missionary work. I listened to her with feigned interest but really you know….I really do not care. All I wanna do is sleep or check out the steward with the tight ass. He wasn’t hot per’se but tight ass yo…tight ass. Priorities people, priorities.

I dunno if it was the exhaustion of sitting on my ass for 9 hours or my parent’s inflicted paranoia or the fact that I’m obsess with CSI, but it occurred to me that the lady was mentioning the fact that she is nun in every other sentence.

Like yes, I get that you are a nun. You don’t have to tell me 3 thousand time. God. Yours and mine…but yeah. It was like she was selling it too hard. So I just kept quite. She kept on asking me about me as well. “Was I flying alone? Is anyone meeting me there? Is this my first time traveling alone?” Kinda…weird. Or maybe not but I’ve decided its no big cause I wont be seeing her after the plane landed anyways. After the plane landed in Amsterdam she asked me if I have a transit and that if I would like to have coffee with her, I told her no cause I much rather not waste time and get to the next plane immediately. I thought that was the end of that.

I was browsing through some of the duty free stuff in Schipol when I bumped into her again and again, she asked me for coffee. Clearly I wasn’t rushing anywhere and I can’t refuse her. That would be plain rude so I said yes. I wasn’t happy bout it but there was nothing else I could do.

So we were having coffee and again she was telling me about her missionary work. I didn’t ask really. I mean, maybe she’s proud of what she does. Maybe she was trying to convert me. Maybe I am the perpetual drama queen creating drama in my head when there is none. Whatever it is, I was on edge with her. I felt that we did not “bumped” into each other; she singled me out. This is of course pure speculation.

So we had coffee and then I offered to clear the table and put away the try. I was just in the process of picking my bag from the floor and putting it over my shoulder when she tugged at it. She had her hand on my bag, tugging it towards her and she said

“Why don’t you leave your bag here while you put away the tray?’

What the fuck? Bitch, I am not gonna leave my bag to virtually a stranger whom I just met not even 10 hours ago, okay. And the hell, who the hell are you? I don’t even know you. The hell should I leave my bag with you. Maybe it was a combination of paranoia and exhaustion but alarm bells went off in my head. So I tugged my bag towards me, smiled politely and told her no thanks and this was the weird part….and maybe a bit creepy. She tugged it again. She was like “Oh no, I insist.”

The hell motherfucker?

I tugged again, stronger this time and told her no. Then I put away the tray and told her that I need to use the bathroom. In truth I was ditching her. I mean the fuck. That was creepy okay. You don’t go tugging people’s bag for no reason. I did however went to the bathroom and literally cleared out the entire contents of my bag on the floor of the stall. I went through one by one, I figured if I found anything suspicious and wasn’t mind to begin with; I would have flush it down the toilet. But there was nothing.

I did not went back to the café. I went straight to my Gate, sat through my 3 hours transit and made no eye contact with anyone. Too tired to deal with another fuckery.

Could have been paranoia but really….what’s the deal with the bag tugging bit? What do you guys think?

19 comments:

Farid
said...

Oh God, what have you done?! You should've just let her taken the bag. Because you refused her, she's gonna put a spell on you.

Old ladies can do that, you know. They are not to be trusted. When approached by a senior citizen of any kind, one must create a circle of protection using salt. Bonus points if you throw it in their face.

LOL. Weird things do happen to you don't they? And yes, it could be paranoia but better safe than sorry! Not making eye contact is the best thing ever. Even when I know someone next to me is looking to start a conversation I keep looking straight ahead and pretend they're not there. It's the ONLY way. And I started doing that after my one experience in an empty first class cabin and this dude came all the way from the other corner to sit next to me and struck up conversation. Luckily, it was a flight to Singapore only. Any longer than 1 hour, I would have kicked him out of the plane!

wtf??? That has 'hinky' written all over it. I thought of a way for people to leave us alone when we travel...when they talk to you, stutututututter...LOL! or a lisp or randomly yell profanities. or have a weird twitch...loooool! If that doesnt drive them away i dont know what will...

Haha, you know whenever I travel anywhere I am confronted with the craziest people and they ALWAYS seem to ask for the seat next to me, whether they're SUPERSIZED in the ass department or talk to their various personalities during the flight or fart uncontrollably then say things like "Aw yeah, that's better!" They all sit by me. I'm a little planet of crazy and they are my moons.

Oddly I've never been singled out at airports yet for drug muling. I think I'm ok till they classify Pantene and potato chips as "drugs". :)

Speaking personally, I always allow strangers to babysit my bag in airports, on condition - of course - that they've gone to great lengths to convince me that they're a nun and have bumped into me more times than can be explained by chance and have sought out my company to an inexplicable extent, and have made an unsolicited offer to take care of my bag. Right before I take it through customs.

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